A Million Drops

by Victor del Arbol

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” He turned to the car door. Anna had stuck her head out and was resting her chin on one forearm smoking calmly. Her eyes drank in the landscape greedily.

  “It will be a lovely surprise,” she said, turning to stroke her daughter’s face. Tania was asleep on her lap; the curvy mountain roads had upset her stomach, and she was pale.

  Velichko got back behind the wheel.

  “We haven’t seen him in over twenty years. I’m not sure it’s worth it, Anna,” he said, adjusting the rearview mirror. “He probably won’t even remember us.”

  Anna frowned her pretty lips and leaned back against the seat, gazing at her daughter’s red hair. Tania was the spitting image of Martin, who she was sure would have given anything to witness this moment.

  “What matters, Vasili, is that we remember him.”

  News spread like wildfire that a beautiful Russian writer had rented a house on the north shore of the lake for the summer. Deputy Inspector Alcázar was the first to hear about it and pay her a visit.

  “It’s not often that we get visitors from the Soviet Union,” he told her.

  He had to force himself to keep from ogling her ample bosom and staring at her pearl-gray eyes, which seemed to be either mocking or scorning him, he couldn’t tell which. No doubt Alcázar was not used to women like her: Anna Akhmatova was thirty-five years old, a native of Western Siberia, a professional writer and cultural attaché with the Soviet consul. She had been civilly wed to the Englishman Martin Balery, and then divorced, and now here she was with a daughter, Tania Balery Akhmatova, three years old.

  “Your picture doesn’t do you justice,” Alcázar said, handing back her passport. “You’re much more beautiful in person.”

  It was true, she was. Any man in his right mind would relish the hope of seducing her or winning her heart. And this was a fact that soon incited the virtuous rage of certain local parishioners. Things had moved on since the forties, but Spain was still partial to witch hunts. And here was a woman who was beautiful to the point of distraction, a divorced Soviet, and with a child; it was as though someone had sent Alcázar a bomb, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a bow.

  “And you are…?” he asked, turning to the man who until now had remained discreetly in the background. He could have been Anna’s father, or her lover.

  Vasili Velichko detested weasels in the service of power and conveniently overlooked—for his sanity’s sake—the fact that he himself had been one for a large portion of his life. Even during his years in the gulag, after being freed from the internment camp in Poland, he had forced himself to be disciplined and uphold Party orthodoxy among the prisoners. But Velichko was a man of conviction and believed firmly in his cause—not in men but in ideas—and that set him apart from men like this police officer in his ridiculous toupee, questioning him from behind a walruslike mustache. Vasili had met plenty of men like him before, mercenaries serving no one but themselves. He held out his passport and stood stiffly, waiting for it to be handed back.

  “This is my brother, he doesn’t speak Spanish very well,” Anna said by way of excuse.

  “You don’t have the same surname.”

  “But we have the same heart; that’s what counts,” Velichko shot back drily.

  Alcázar could tell this guy was trouble. Luckily, he said he wasn’t planning to stay at the house. He had a business to run in Barcelona and had come only to ensure that his “sister” and “niece” got settled in.

  “Enjoy your summer, miss. I hope you’ll write kind things about us,” the deputy inspector said, thereby concluding formalities and promising to return soon in a less official capacity.

  Before leaving, Vasili tried once more—though without much conviction, given how many times he’d failed already—to convince Anna that what she was doing was senseless.

  “We came here to make a fresh start, Anna. And all you’re doing is digging yourself a hole. Come with me to Barcelona. We can raise Tania there and leave the past in the past. Please.”

  Anna gave sweet old Vasili the sort of weary look someone might give a once-fresh bouquet of flowers that had wilted. The man who throughout her childhood had looked out for her was still in the gulag—or at least his spirit was—and he didn’t realize she was no longer a girl who, far from needing his protection, now took care of him. She had been the one who managed to do the impossible: obtain three passports, the chance for a new life, and get Velichko out of the USSR where he would no doubt have been arrested yet again and executed for his refusal to keep quiet about Khrushchev and the new post-Stalin leaders. And now she had to pay the price she’d agreed to.

  “I can’t go. I have to hold up my end of the bargain, Vasili.”

  He gazed at Anna in resignation. “It’s not just because you promised Igor Stern that you’re here. This is personal. No matter what you say, this is something you want to do, isn’t it?”

  Anna poked her head out the window of the lake house, which had yet to sense that she was in control. The place was still vague and uninhabited; she needed to settle in and make her mark.

  “I owe it to my mother. And I owe it to myself.”

  “Think of Tania, Anna. Your mother is the past, Nazino is the past, Elías is the past. Your daughter is the future, the hope of a new life.”

  Anna smiled. Men like Vasili were so naïve. No matter how many times life knocked them down, they always thought that things could be different, better.

  Laura let out a whimper as she touched her side. Gonzalo realized and stopped chasing her around the patio with his arms spread like airplane wings.

  “Does it hurt?”

  She made a face. “Inside.”

  She’d thought it was never going to happen again. After the last time, Elías had gotten down on his knees and wrapped his arms around her legs, leaving them wet with his tears. He’d begged forgiveness so many times that Laura had lost count, and almost unwillingly she’d ended up stroking his gray hair and crying along with him. She loved him, despite it all, and the older she got, the more she realized that she couldn’t stop her love from growing even though it kept happening. That was why she wanted to believe him. And for a few years, two at least, he had kept his word and Laura believed it was all over, squirreled away in the back of her mind, someplace she’d never let anyone see. But now it had happened again, and this time it was so violent she’d been unable to react.

  This time, Elías hadn’t begged for forgiveness or told terrible stories about the past. It was as though he’d realized that it had gone too far and that Laura would never forget. Now he spent his nights locked in the shed, and when her mother tried coax him out, they fought viciously, hitting and insulting each other; they were destroying themselves. The one thing Laura was determined to do was keep Gonzalo away from it all. Lately she’d sensed a change in the way Elías behaved with him. Gonzalo was so innocent and pure, and he admired his father so much that Elías felt guilty and undeserving; he fought the temptation to prove to his son how wrong he was about his father. It was as though he hated Gonzalo’s respect, could not stand his innocence and admiration.

  “Get him out of my sight,” Elías had warned Laura more than once, tongue thick with alcohol, his green eye darkening.

  Laura had no intention of allowing her brother to get hurt in any way. She could take it herself, could endure terrible things, because she was like her father. They had the same horrific knack for indifference to their own suffering and contempt for the idea of ever achieving happiness. At the age of thirteen, Laura already knew the ways of the world and the rules she would have to play by. But Gonzalo was like Esperanza—selfless, timid, silent, obedient; he was unable to accept that even if you turn your back, life won’t go away and often reminds you of its existence in the cruelest ways. He wasn’t ready to fight for his own survival and never would be. Gonzalo idolized his father, an
d that was as it should be. Ignorance was his best defense.

  Laura was the first to see the woman at the gate, catching sight of her before Gonzalo raced after his sister, before the dogs began to bark. The woman stared fixedly at her, with a somber look. Then she raised her eyes to the house, saw something that made her smile, and ambled off down the path to the road. A minute later, Laura heard the sound of a car driving away. She retraced her steps to the house and looked up at where the woman had been gazing. Her mother stood at one of the upstairs windows, tightly gripping the sill and staring at the path the woman had walked down. Laura had never before seen such rage in Esperanza’s eyes.

  Two minutes later, her father’s old Renault appeared, rattling at the barn door. Before Laura could stop Gonzalo, he raced after Elías’s car like a little dog. He chased after his father clumsily for as long as he could, finally stopping to catch his breath, the tailpipe leaving a thick trail of exhaust in its wake.

  The old are humbled by youth only if they haven’t lived enough. And yet all the sorrows of age came crashing down upon Elías the moment Anna stood there before him. Not a trace remained of the girl he’d carried, day after endless day, across the steppe, and this meant that not a trace was left of the young man who had cared for her, either. Elías was losing more ground each day.

  “So, you’re a writer,” he said, glancing around the small library Anna was setting up on the first floor, next to the living room. “What kind of writer are you?”

  Anna pondered this for a moment and then gave him a somber look. “The kind who writes.”

  “And you expect me to believe you came here just to write a book?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything.”

  Elías was standing at the back door. Outside, in the garden, the grass was shimmering and Anna watched Tania pass by quickly, chasing butterflies.

  “What do you want? Why are you here?” Elías asked aggressively, after a prolonged silence.

  Anna felt rage surge through her, but it was discernible only by the slight flash in her eye.

  “You’re not very happy to see me, are you?”

  Elías stood stiffly in the doorway. “What I see is not what I remember. I’m no fool; I know you detest me. I suppose after all those years with Stern you were infected by his poison. Nothing I could say in my defense would change your mind, so I may as well save my breath.”

  “I’d like to hear your version of the story. Something that differs from the one I know: that a coward killed my mother and handed me over to a bunch of cutthroats to save his own life.”

  The house must have been sealed for quite some time before she rented it. The old pine furniture was covered in dust, and thick cobwebs hung in the corners and between the ceiling beams. As he moved to one side, Elías felt a sticky web catch in his hair. He reached into a pocket and felt the familiar touch of Irina’s locket, then weighed the idea of showing it to Anna. After all, it belonged to her.

  “I’m sure you’ve read the report Vasili wrote in 1934.”

  “I have. But I haven’t heard it from your mouth.”

  Memories are not classical paintings in ornate frames, or snapshots on shelves in people’s homes. Memories are wide-open spaces often visited in silence. What good would it do to evoke them? Nothing he could say about the past would ring any more true to her than anything Stern might have said. People are inclined to believe whatever best fits their character. And Anna’s was cold and aloof.

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  She lit one of her sweetish cigarettes and tossed the lighter carelessly onto a desk, then exhaled in exasperation and flashed Elías an irritated look.

  “I’d heard you weren’t very talkative, but I thought a trip this long might merit a bit more consideration on your part. As you wish. I, on the other hand, do have something to say to you.”

  She pulled open a drawer and tossed him an envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  “Friends sending their regards. Open it.”

  Anna walked out into the garden and left him alone. The envelope contained photographs of a dozen or more men and women, each with a date on the back—the date of their death—and place of execution: A.S., Paris 1947; S.M., Lyon 1947; W.B., Toulouse 1948; G.T., Arles 1948…Madrid…London…Marseilles…Berlin…1949, 1950, 1952, 1958, 1962, 1963, 1965…Each of them denounced by Elías, who had handed them over to Ramón Alcázar personally. Nothing was said of the dozens of men and women whose lives he had saved with the tip-offs his friend gave him about raids and ambushes planned for leaders of the Party, trade unions, and student associations. Or those he’d smuggled out of Spain with false identification in the past decade. None of that balanced things out, and he knew it—the idea of like curing like was a bunch of hogwash. The deaths of each of the comrades, NKVD agents, anti-Franco activists in Spain and France, anarchists, and CNT supporters were all on his back. And so were those of the Spanish police and spies whom the NKVD had eliminated thanks to Ramón’s information, which they believed came from Elías. They were all simply pawns, whether black or white. It didn’t matter which side they were on; they were dispensable. It was the important chess pieces that had to be safeguarded.

  He took a few minutes before going out to the garden, the photos of the dead clutched in his hand. They burned him, insulted him, shouted at him, bit his fingers. Anna was innocently chasing her daughter through the field. Finally the summer sun had come out, and the air was filled with color. A beautiful scene on a bucolic June day.

  Seeing Elías, Anna told her daughter to go play in the house. Tania whined for a bit, but she obeyed.

  “What is this supposed to mean?” Elías asked, pointing at her with the crumpled photos in his hand.

  Anna chose her words carefully. “I think you know what it means. You’ve been collaborating with the Franco police since 1947, even though you still have contacts in the Party and still, unofficially, work for them. But you don’t need to fret; they don’t know…yet.”

  She let the threat sink slowly into Elías’s consciousness. He sat on a tree stump a few feet away and, for a long time, remained silent, head bowed. Elías showed no sign of feeling defeated and instead reclassified the situation, modifying his next steps. If Anna had expected his nerves to be shot, she was now realizing what a miscalculation that had been. But she had an ace up her sleeve, something that would certainly bring him to his knees.

  “Your friend Ramón lied to you all these years. You betrayed all those people for nothing. Igor Stern is still alive; in fact, he sends his regards.”

  Elías observed Irina’s daughter attentively, exhaustively, trying to discern what it was he saw in her face: scorn, indifference, hatred, or simply exhaustion. There was certainly no trace of gratitude, affection, or doubt. She had already judged him and found him guilty. Her announcement had clenched his stomach and made him want to vomit, but he’d controlled it, with effort. He needed a minute to stop sweating and recover, to regain control of his body, which seemed suddenly to have lolled, as though he had no bones.

  “What is this, some kind of blackmail?”

  Anna slowly shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not that easy. He wants to see you, tomorrow.”

  “Igor. You’re telling me he’s here? In Barcelona?”

  “He’s never been far from you, the man followed you wherever you went.” Anna considered what she was about to say as if she herself couldn’t make sense of it. “He’s obsessed with you. He says you’re the only man he’s never been able to defeat.”

  Elías emitted a broken laugh, almost a howl, and flew to his feet.

  “He got my coat, and he got you. What else does that son of a bitch want?!”

  Anna was unimpressed by the outburst.

  “He wants you.”

  Elías struggled to calm down when the redheaded girl approached, her large
eyes open wide. She vaguely reminded him of someone.

  “He’s using you against me, Anna, because he knows that will hurt me more than anything. And you happily lend yourself to his game.”

  Anna gazed tenderly at her daughter and recalled the night she was conceived, over three years ago. She could never thank the frail, unstable redhead enough for what he’d done—risk his life to help her escape the hotel where Igor had been keeping her, in Paris. Anna was a teenager at the time, and he—a raving beggar—had managed to get her to Gare du Nord and put her on a train to Le Havre. But it didn’t take Igor long to find her. Years later, she ran into Martin again, in Frankfurt. He’d rebuilt his life and was having an affair with a Canadian diplomat. He looked happy, and helped her yet again, obtaining—through his lover—a visa so that she could travel to Canada. That time she managed to escape for a couple of years and actually believed Martin’s help was going to allow her to have a normal existence.

  She got a job in a clothing store in Ontario, met a French Canadian, and they began a relationship that ended abruptly one night when he didn’t turn up for a date to go to the movies. In his place, Igor Stern arrived at her door. It was during her two years in Canada that Martin told her about Elías and her mother, Irina. He also spoke affectionately of Claude, and especially of Michael, who’d been the love of his life. Martin detested Igor and Anna realized that this was the main reason he was determined to help her. He wanted to destroy Igor, and taking something that he considered his property was one way to do that.

  Perhaps that was why, when they met yet again in Moscow three years ago, he was willing—for the first and only time in his life—to make love to a woman who was almost twenty years his junior. Martin had arranged to meet her at the grand Lenin Hotel; he was traveling with his diplomat lover on a tour of a dozen or more countries. He’d aged a lot and looked exhausted, she thought, and Martin admitted dispassionately that he was dying. They drank too much, and when he walked her back to her apartment on Bolshoi Street and Anna kissed him on the lips, he didn’t seem surprised or protest, letting himself be swept along—albeit with no curiosity or passion. He spilled his seed inside her with restrained tenderness. Martin died two months later, in the first-class carriage of a train on the Trans-Siberian Railway somewhere near Turkmenistan, traveling the same snow-covered landscape that had shattered all of his youthful dreams and aspirations thirty years earlier. He never knew that he’d left behind a daughter, and was thus the only man who’d managed to beat Igor Stern.